Some suggestions for the future

[Id10tsyndrome]

I'm sure these have already been talked about in other posts, but I'm going to add my two cents (for what it's worth) on some improvements that I would like to see in game; Specifically around the custom battles, ship designer and battle mechanics.

Custom Battles:

90% of the time, I don't mind the ships that the designer creates for an enemy fleet (some designs are ridiculous btw), I would like to see more user control over the creation of the enemy fleet. For example, limiting torpedoes. There are times where I just want to create the biggest, most armed BB and duke it out with other BBs without having to worry about getting torp'd by an enemy BB.  Basically an all out slug-fest between BBs, BCs and CAs without using torpedoes.  It wouldn't be that hard to do.  Have a user selectable option that would keep torps from being available. If active, it would simply keep all ships from mounting torps. Since CLs and DDs used torps as part of their 'main' armament per say, maybe even keep CLs and DDs from being used if the option to remove torps is active, as they would be rather useless, except for the smokescreen they can deploy.

 

Ship Designer:

As stated above, sometimes the designer creates ridiculous designs for enemy combatants. I've seen barbettes normally used for main guns be mounted with 5in secondaries , I've seen main guns be mounted so close to each other that they shouldn't be able to rotate (but they do), I've seen ships so unbalanced that the designer shouldn't have created them in the first place (like 3 turrets fore / 1 turret aft). There should be a way to have the designer be more on point when creating AI ships. 

I would also change the mounting of the small barbette for secondaries from being locked to the centerline of a ship. There are times where, when creating a super BB for the German's for example, I can't place 8in secondaries on the sides because the slots aren't big enough. However, if I could mount the single small secondary barbette in those spots, I would be able to add the secondaries I want. If we're keeping the game grounded in reality, I can understand not having this ability, however, this game is not grounded in reality. One of the biggest lures for this game is being able to create your own designs and fight. 

 

Battle Mechanics:

I think having the option to specify ammo types independently for main and secondary batteries during battles would make the battles more realistic. With that, I would also suggest having a delay between firing when you switch ammo types. As it stands, you can switch from AP to HE in the middle of a loading cycle and then immediately fire the new rounds. In a real battle, when the order is given to switch ammo types, the guns don't immediately start firing the new ammo, they have to be loaded. This should be added as well.  There would also be a hard limit to the number of AP and HE shells that were on board. As it stands, all 800 rounds (for ex) can be HE or AP depending on what you have selected as the ammo type. For example, BBs typically carried more AP shells than HE shells however I wasn't able to find an exact ratio when doing research for this post.  HMS Hood for instance carried 120 shells per 15in turret.  In game, I would probably suggest a 1/3 ratio... 1/3 HE, 2/3 AP.

In a real world scenario, ships would able to target more than one ship with their main batteries. It would be nice to be able to have the fore and aft batteries target different ships as there are fore and aft directors that can lock different targets, especially for late era ships.

Ship speed is another area that needs reworked. Acceleration is okay, but slowing down takes forever; much longer than it should. In reality, doing what is called a 'full crash-back' (all 4 screws reversed from full ahead to full astern) in an Iowa Class BB took, from what I've seen, anywhere from the length of the ship to a little over a mile to come to a complete stop and begin reversing. In the game, setting speed from say 30kts to 0 kts without using the silly reverse engines that would actually damage your ship, seems to take so long to slow the ship that it's not even worth doing. My point is, if you set your speed to 0 and leave it there, the ship barely slows even by the time the battle is over. From the physics aspect, this is wrong. If a 50,000ton ship displaces 50,000tons of water ahead of it, in turn, the water resistance should slow the ship down faster than it does in game if there is nothing to propel the ship forward. This mechanic needs reworked.  Also, doing a full crash-back should not cause damage to the engines like done in game. 

Also, with the above speed issue in mind, turning a ship, especially having a rudder hard-over, should cause the ship to slow while turning. Again, basic physics.  Turning a 50,000ton ship going 30kts puts increased drag/water resistance on the ship and would cause it to slow until it finished the turn. In game, this doesn't happen and should to make things more realistic.

Again, my two cents for what it's worth.

Thanks....